Comments on The Usability Architect: Under the umbrella of User Experience - Usability ...

User Experience is rapidly becoming the catchphras...

2010-01-11T16:37:34.020+01:00

User Experience is rapidly becoming the catchphrase to drop every flashified, gimmicky junk gizmo into a UI.

Forget the future, User Experience has Already devolved to mean branding, which has come to mean nothing at all. Like all pop phrases, UX as bizarro world opposite to the spirit and letter of UX design.

In this brave new (old) world there is no user testing, no methodology (beyond usability on the rare occasion), just designer whim and fad chasing.

Not to mention you built your UX house on the warmed over leftovers of usability. Now you reap the consequence as the current Donald Norman's current "Technology First, Needs Last" crisis of faith.

In my own experience working at larger companies s...

2009-12-31T15:49:06.705+01:00

In my own experience working at larger companies such as Yahoo! and such, I see less and less IA's these days and more and more Interaction Designers. From my own experience, it's a little bit of a west coast vs. east coast thing, or in house vs. agency thing, whereas west coast & in house companies tend to refer to us Interaction Designers, and the east coast or agencies tend to prefer IA's.

Personally, I'd prefer my role to be titled "Product Designer" (and I've always hated trying to explain the title "information architect" to a layman), sense every in-house job I've had is working with product managers and we refer to our experiences/designs as "products". IA, Interaction Design, Usability, Information Design, etc., are all just skillsets that I've come to employ myself over the last 6-7 years to stay relevant in an ever changing career.

For me, it's more about making sure the designer is able to build time into the project schedule to flesh out the IA. Maybe I'm spoiled, or perhaps it's just that I expect to do some level of mentoring with any new hire to round out the skills I need them to use on a regular basis. But frankly, 90% of the IA I've done for my web projects in the past could easily be handled by thoughtful designer with a little time.

In addition, in my own experience, again at Yahoo! and at my more recent employer, I see more and more hybrid interaction visual designers. As I look to build my own team in the near future, this is definitely the type of designer that I'd prefer to hire. I'm not as concerned with hiring an IA because most teams I've worked with are able to work with the designer to iterate effectively on the this subject.

That all said, I guess my main point is that I don't see IA going away as skillset, but people who've been working solely in IA should start to round out their other skills more in order to stay relevant as I don't see the individual role staying around that much longer. Heck, I don't see my traditional of Interaction Designer staying around that much longer and I need to work on my visual design skills in order to stay relevant.

Hi all, I am happy my post raised some discussion....

2009-12-30T19:08:43.625+01:00

Hi all, I am happy my post raised some discussion. Maybe you like to read through the first chapters of Alan Coopers book About Face 3.0 - he also discusses the topic.

However, I agree with you that a combination of IA and UX in one person demands special skills and advanced knowledge in both fields. Speaking for myself, I think we will see more such generalist specialists in the future.

Have a nice year end party!

No, no, no. Every time our Experience Architectur...

2009-12-30T16:38:40.661+01:00

No, no, no.

Every time our Experience Architectures/UX people try to do the job that an Information Architect/IA people should be doing, it all goes to hell.

User Experience Architecture is about making something logical and easy to use for end users. It's got very little to do with content. The role is important on all sites/systems that have a user interface.

Information Architecture is about classifying content. It is what taxonomists and librarians and card sorting exercises and clever search engines do. Content needs a good IA even if it is never shown on a website, or is shown on multiple sites.

Occassionally I've met good UX people that can also do IA, and the other way round. But it is the exception, not the rule. Keep the disciplines separate please.

Thanks for listening
Jon

I agree with you on many aspects of this article. ...

2009-12-30T16:32:02.932+01:00

I agree with you on many aspects of this article. However, I do think that the huge volumes of content most organizations need to manage today still need to have structure, organization, and cohesiveness -- regardless of interactivity.

The task of organizing content is different from UX or UXD. This is what information architecture always meant to me, but regardless of what you call it, it is a separate discipline that will live on and grow in the next decade.

Great article! I think the key here is that usabil...

2009-12-28T20:18:25.008+01:00

Great article! I think the key here is that usability testing is accessible to everyone now and ROI is the goal. Really you just need to define what that "return" is to you because its not always dollars :)